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Tag Archives: Phoenix Viewer

Recenlty I have checking again the website of the developer’s of Firestorm and Phoneix viewer and there are some interesting changes!. Firts let’s begin with Firestorm Viewer (this information is extracted from the phoenix viewer website):

Phoenix-Firestorm 3.3.0.24880 Release!This one started out as a maintenance release but due to the huge list of new features we’re going to call it a Full On Release! Firestorm 3.3.0.24880 not only comes with a very impressive list of features which make it nearly feature complete in comparison to Phoenix, it also comes loaded with very important bug fixes.

Added slider to DoF tab in preferences to control the quality of DoF (Tankmaster Finesmith)

Made additional lighting in Edit Appearance optional (Zi Ree)

But there’s a little more, just because they are making some changes in the FUI (flexible user interface), so this new interface of Firestorm will make it look like as Phoenix Viewer or V1 Viewer. Here is a little explanation about:

“Firestorm Future! Flexible Interface!Wow! this is exciting news! We told you in the past that the V2 interface was just not flexible enough for us to accurately mimic the V1 interface.. this still holds true today. However! we’ve recently merged in Linden Lab’s V3 FUI (Flexible User Interface) work and while that merge has caused a lot of interface breakage we’ve also discovered that it is as named, VERY flexible! Zi Ree (creator of the Firestorm AO, Our All-Original Particle Editor, and Pie menu for V2) has been at it again! She has so far managed to create a Phoenix like interface option in Firestorm that is far closer to the classic UI as any modern viewer has ever accomplished! This optional skin feature is likely to be hailed the best feature ever developed on a V2 viewer for V1 users! Of course we’re also working at improving all our other skins as well to give you as many options as possible. We are SO excited about this work! While this is all very much still work in progress and there’s lots left to do we wanted to give you a preview of what’s to come!”

“A new interface for Firestrom Viewer is developing to bring the V1 Viewer Interface into a V2 Viewer”

This is one of the things that Linden Labs should take care about, “the interface”. So many resident’s haven’t decided yet to try the new sl viewer just because they can’t understand or don’t like how the V2 Viewer interface looks like. This is a really good idea that the developers of Firestorm take care to bring the V1 interface into V2 Viewer so many residents would feel at home and with a familiar GUI (Graphical User Interface). Now, let’s speak about another viewer (my favorite one!) Phoenix Viewer, there is a new release which is 1.6.0.1600. But at the moment I didn’t see any information about what new things or changes for this new release, there’s one thing I found:

“Phoenix…Remember we promised we would keep Phoenix going as long as it’s feasible and we will stand by that promise. And it’s sounding lately like LL is starting to take a less aggressive stance towards V1 than what we were initially told nearly a year ago. By the sounds of it, LL has no immediate plans now to break v1 by turning off server side functionality. This of course is nothing more than the impression we are getting, there has been no official statement either way. Which means we want to get another Phoenix release out some time soon as well. When? good question.. no time frame yet but hopefully within the next few months. We’re hoping we can address some of the performance, stability and mesh related issues our Phoenix users are experiencing on the 1600 release.”

This is a good thing to remember for everybody, as people have to leave Internet Explorer 6 (The well known microsoft web browser) then this will be the same with Phoenix Viewer. Phoneix is not gonna be forever in the metaverse and one of this days people will have to leave it and use a new viewer (like Firestrom).

I should posted this before on the blog but I was a little busy with somethings in RL, sorry for being late!, anwyway here are my thinkings about what happened to Kirstein’s Viewer:

This is something a little bit sad but anyway, RL is calling and Kirstein will not have free time to focus on the viewer and also crowfounded didn’t reach the foundation targeret, you can read in here:

“AND FINALLY …..

Alas the crowdfunder did not reach it’s target, it is perhaps unfortunate that the funding pitch came at a time where I have limited internet and could not make more of a song and dance about it… But should I need too? I had a review of previous downloads and stats over the last year from the site it had 280 thousand unique visitors, 30 million page views and consumed 3256 gigabytes of data. The downloads of the clients varied of course but on average between 6000 to 8000 downloads were made per version.

Last week sourceforge registered 217 downloads of an older client! Looking at actual unique login statistics provided by the Lab itself we find a good 3 to 4 thousand people used the viewer on a very regular basis.”

I don’t doubt about this, but at as I said before, I have my own opinion about OpenSource software and what I said about it philosophy (read my post about Opensource Software in this blog), if Kirstein could reach the fund then the development of Kirstein’s Viewer could be continuous until the next year but as it was not possible then the project have to be finished. But there’s more on kirstien webpage:

“Looking at the positive side we did have a small but VERY generous bunch of funders and all things considered 28% of the target was none too shoddy, to those people I thank you Crowdfunder should be in contact with you with refunding info as I write this. I do wonder if the 217 people who downloaded the old client last week from sourceforge ever decided to fund.. we will never know.”

I would like to congratulate all of those people who could support kirstein (sorry I couldn’t :(), because better than the money it was the good intention to get alive the project. Even kirstein viewer was not so popular like Phoenix or any other viewer it has some original things that make it quite diferent for the other sl viewers and even I think that kirstein viewer was the first one viewers outside Lindens Lab viewer that supported Mesh (I hope, I am not wrong). Here a part of the post that I would like to give an opinion:

“Anyway perhaps the biggest shame is what I consider the missed opportunity, many times groups or organisations have contacted me with requests for customised clients to suit specific needs this funding pitch would have been perfect for such an endeavour.Or groups with a common interest or goal could have got together and collectively funded the project with the goal of adding specific features.”

For those who were asking for “customised clients for to suit specific needs”, why they didn’t fund to the project ?, even some organizations or groups did contact Kirstein asking for “customised clients”, I mean if they wanted something then if they funded to the project then they could get what they want. But not as some people may think “It is opensource and it is free, then I don’t have to pay”, as I said this is totally wrong. Does an Opensource developer don’t have the same rights than a pay developer ?, yes it have the same rights as I said, they work is so valuable than a pay developer. An here is the end of the article:

“Enough rambling, lets tie up the loose ends and finish this.

Many many Thanks to Everyone who has supported this viewer you know who you are. The website forums will be closed, and the site will close at the end of December.”

Bye bye for Kirstein’s Viewer! but I wish the best for Kirstein new job and Good Luck in your new task!

This was the lastest message that Kirstein left on his webpage which will be closed soon. To you and to your partner, I will wish you the best but also to have a good luck in your new task!.

Now, that Kirstein’s Viewer is going out of SL soon, but there’s someone who is forking the source code of this viewer into a new one that is still on development. This new viewer is developed by another resident called Niran’s and I am going to speak about it near the future.

Here is another test but at this time I will add another V1 that has support with mesh so I will be testing mesh in 3 viewers which are: Phoenix 1.60, Singularity and Firestorm. Why another Sl Viewer ? and not only Phoenix and Firestorm?, currently Singularity have diferent codebase that phoenix and the support from Mesh comes from another developer not the same as who developed Cool Viewer (Where Phoenix 1.60 takes the support for mesh).

Before I run this tests, I want to say something, I don’t recommend anyone to do this, unless you know what you are doing, each sl viewer has a different way of render objects in Second Life or Opensim, they can load the same sculptures but each sl viewer have a very different way of rezz and sometimes if you change so frequently of sl viewer then it can make some sculptures look different or even deforme them.

Anyone is responsible of their acts. I speak in my own experience and I have lost some sculpts (freebies) just chaning so many times different viewers when I made some test (that’s why I only run Phoenix when I want to have fun or build things on metaverse). I just suggest you to run your favorite sl viewer always and not to change of different sl viewers so many times!, look what happened (read below this post) to my sculpt head when I change so many time of sl viewers.

I got many demos and some freebie mesh objects (avatars, clothes, etc….) as possible but most of them came with the word “Demo”, so I just choosed very complete detailed mesh, which is a freebie, it is a “Superhero” Custom to make all my test. Anyway here are the other mesh objects, so you can judge by yourself, if this looks good or not:

– One pair of boots:

– A “Superhero” and a “Stealht” customs:

and The last mesh object, A Shirt :

Here is how “The SuperHero” custom looks like on Phoenix 1.60:

Now is how he looks like with Singularity:

But as an observation, look what happened to my head sculpt when I logging in Singularity viewer:

It seems that Singularity have some bug that don’t rezz some sculpts objects very well and make them to look it like a small ball, I had the same problem before with Firestorm, if I log on to Phoneix 1.60 the head look just fine:

Finally Firestorm:

Logging into Firestorm took more time than Singularity and also I had the same problem as before it rezz my head like a ball but there is something different, the mesh object looks a little bit better, the shadows and the light looks pretty well!.

As I final comment, each viewer has its strength and its weakness, all of them show a impressive mesh objects but some just fail loading my sculpt prim. I don’t know what could happened, may be it is a bug that it is still present on Singularity or Firestom, it is possible that I would report this to each viewer developer and they can take a look what happened. I would like next time to make the same test but in a different grid and I am speaking about OpenSim.